Customer Reviews

Chasing the Dragon

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After working for the San Francisco Police Department for seven years, Dante Mancuso wasn't satisfied the way a case ended up; he pursued it against the orders of his superiors. Internal Affairs booted him out on trumped up charges. The shadowy Company recruited him and has sent him on assignments around the world. His latest is that he should return to San Francisco, go to his father's funeral, and get reacquainted with old friends and his ex-girlfriend.

He is to arrange a sting between the Wus (a Chinese family with legal and illegal businesses that use the Mancuso warehouse for temporary storage) and two drug traffickers Mason Wow and Yosek Faton (an ex con affiliated with the Nation of Islam). Dante learns that his father thought someone was out to kill him; he gave the negatives of pictures to his brother Sal who gave them to Dante. When Sal is murdered, Dante thinks it has to do with the pictures of illegal immigrants dead in a case on a ship. These pictures lead Dante back to why he was kicked off SFPD with hopes the truth will finally come out during the sting and its aftermath.

The protagonist is a survivor and a man who didn't believe a killer's confession. This led him in to the world of the Company, where rules are made to be broken and operations are quasi-legal. His discovery of the truth about the man's death seven years ago changes nothing and he has to learn to live with his place in the world now. Domenic Stansberry has written an exciting crime thriller where actions are shades of gray and people are not always who they seem.

Harriet Klausner

Interesting characters who all inhabit and are comfortable in the gray area, great descriptions of San Francisco past and present, keen insight into relationships between Chinese and Italians as neighborhoods commingled and histories and cultures intertwined.

This is a brutal book that brings to mind Pelecanos, though not quite as realistic or street wise. Also, not all of the plot lines are fully played out.

Still, an interestng read that asks questions and forces you to think. One note: the typos in the hardback are inexcusable and will hopefully be cleaned up in the paperback version.

Intricate and suspenseful, Chasing the Dragon is an absorbing, well thought-out mystery. Stansberry is an excellent storyteller, rotating perspectives throughout the book, giving the reader a look into the mindset of good guys and not-so-good guys. He paints a vivid picture of San Francisco with its Chinatown, its shipping docks and its old Italian neighborhoods. The main character, Dante, is one that the reader grows to respect despite the shady work he does and atrocities with which he's involved. We sympathize with him and his lost love, Marilyn, hoping for a reunion. We also hope that he gets to the bottom of the murders that have touched his family. Stansberry masterfully weaves together several lives and their stories while ultimately surprising the reader in the end. After the book was finished, I found myself still thinking about Dante and the rest, wondering if they will ever be the same.

Stansberry is a skilled writer. This book makes me want to read more of his work. From the onset, I was absorbed with the San Francisco scene and the possible underworld of that city-the criminals and the policemen that have to deal with them. I like novels that give me a good feel of a place-like I am right there with the characters. Stansberry does it well. This was definitely a good read. I highly recommend Chasing the Dragon.

Chasing the Dragon is an enigma. Aspects of this book are very, very good. Other elements, however, leave much to be desired. At times, the latter almost (but not quite!) overshadow the former. What results is a story that will entertain, touch and excite you: a story in which "the good" predominates but one in which "the bad and the ugly" will also leave you scratching your head in puzzlement.

Dante Mancuso is an ex-San Francisco homicide detective now living in New Orleans where he does the occasional odd job for a shadowy intelligence/security agency called simply "the Company." One night Mancuso receives a phone call from his Uncle Salvatore informing him that his ailing father has died. The Company seizes on this personal tragedy to send Dante undercover in his old neighborhood, the North Beach area of San Francisco. While back home for the funeral Mancuso is to pick up the pieces of his old life, which means insinuating his way back into the family business of running a wharf-side warehouse. His aim is to set up a sting operation involving some shady local businessmen and a powerful Chinese family rumored to be involved in heroin smuggling.

But, as that famous novelist says, you can't go home again. In addition to rekindling the flame of a painful old romance, Dante is also haunted by the case that drove him off the police force and out of `Frisco in the first place - the disappearance of a Chinese businessman and his family and the murder of an important local politician. After his uncle is murdered, Mancuso begins to fear that there may be a sinister connection between those events from nearly a decade ago and his family's business.

In places, the plot of Chasing the Dragon is opaque at best and, at worst, downright murky. As compelling as the characters are their motivation is never clearly or persuasively set forth. What's more, the role of the Company and their purpose in orchestrating events as they do is left frustratingly obscure. Is this a private security firm or a government agency of some sort? Simple questions such as that are never adequately addressed.

That being said, one still has to give Stansberry very high marks for his brilliant and evocative use of local color. The author brings the streets of North Beach literally alive in the pages of this book. Vallejo and Fresno streets appear, as do Grant and Columbus avenues for example. Anyone familiar with that lovely old section of San Francisco - and even those that aren't - will feel the fog brush against their cheeks and their calves begin to tighten as he or she walks with the novel's characters up the steep stairways and sidewalks that are so much a part of that picturesque area.

The problems with this book notwithstanding, there's certainly enough promise in its pages to warrant the reader keeping his or her eyes out for the author's next offering in a projected series featuring Dante Mancuso. One hopes that there he will "accentuate the positive" and clear up some of the ambiguity that causes this book to fall just short of being wholly satisfying. (James Clar-MYSTERY NEWS)

At first I thought it was accidental but then I thought he was having fun with San Franciscians...grant street really is grant avenue...but the telegraph hillers have a srant street fair...so that was understandable....but then there's broadway avenue...its a way dude broad way or broadway....Marina avenue its marina blvd...the old divide between chinatown and north beach is broadway not grant ave which runs thru chinatown... you can't walk up Union St from the embarcadero to telegraph hill Union deadins on the hill....I've never heard anyone call North beach just the beach...ever and I lived there and worked on grant ave....and to look down the rocky slope of telegraph hill you won't see the golden gate (it nearly behind you) but you will see san francisco bay....the golden gate is only the narrow opening into the bay...he gets more stuff wrong... and the pidgen on one page totally unexplainable since it's coming from the narrator not a charactor.

BUT A GREAT YARN NONTHELESS

This was my first Domenic Stansberry book. Being from the San Francisco Bay area, I thought he deftly captured the essence of the street life and the old italian neigborhoods. Loads of authentic atmosphere! The story moved quickly, and I read it in a few long sittings, unable to put it down. I'll probably read more of his work, but he's worth giving a try.
IMHO
J.Jenkins

The most interesting and best-developed character in this book was the city of San Francisco, the flavors and nuances of which the author captured beautifully. Unfortunately, I found the human characters flat and uninvolving. There is good dialogue and suspense, but also massive coincidences and dangling threads left at the end. I was sadly disappointed in this book.